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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Look, guys! Two posts in one week! I'm so awesome. Obviously. (Don't leave! No, come back!)
All right, fine. I'm not. Two posts in one month. I'm beating my record. Remember when I used to post like, ten times a month? Yeah. Me either.
Originally, this post was written last month, but I never published it, because I was writing it at school and the computer hated me. However, I like Zombies. So. I am posting this now. Ignore the time discrepancies and enjoy the creepy dead things loveliness that is my Zombie-tastic musings.
And if that isn't enough...
Here. Have a Zac Efron. No charge.

Anyway. TIME FOR A TIME WARP IN WHICH SAM TAKES YOU BACK TO A POST I WROTE A MONTH AGO. WHEEE.

...

Anyway again.

I'm in the final days of senior year, now, which means that school consists of basically nothing. No, seriously. I read a 500 page book between yesterday and today without ever opening it outside of the school building. We watched a movie in one class. Oh, and my debate partner cracked his head open on the ceiling trying to jump off a chair.

...No. I'm not kidding. Ten staples and two stitches in his head. Lots of blood. There also may or may not be ten or twelve posts on Facebook about how I threw a tomahawk at him and that's how he ended up in the hospital.

Yeah, baby, we're going to Nationals.

Anyway. We're currently living in a world of boredom, and that does very bad things when combined with a bunch of hyperactive teenagers. For me, I play on tumblr a lot spend the time contemplating the known universe and everything within it. My friends, though, have found something even more interesting.

They've found the zombie apocalypse.

No, I'm not kidding. The entire debate team has, in the past week, discussed the coming zombie doom more than we've discussed anything that actually has to do with, you know, debate. Maggie starts quite a bit of it, and is assisting in writing a screen play.

The Zombies are coming, apparently, and none of us are getting out alive. Normally, I would be pertrubed. In the team of Zombies versus Unicorns, I am totally on the sides of the sparkles. But, that said, I'm fascinated. A fantastical element of society, implemented into common conversation? Me gusta. It's like we nerds are taking over the world.

One thing that the writing world is quite interesting in comes in the form of nerd power. Being intelligent -- being showy about being geeky -- isn't really something that's embraced in high school. Shocking, right? But in the writing world? At Alpha? Random knowledge is something to be proud of. It's something that is hard won, and eventually, something that makes life interesting. For years, I've collected random bits of information. We all do. For me, I know about 17th century navies and pirates, and Norse mythology, and the history of redheads, and a lot of random political theory. For Maggie, there is a multitude of things -- music, philosophy of dreams -- but specifically, a lot of random strangeness about zombies. And it's cool to me to watch a group of friends reveal their secret geekiness in something as strange as creepy dead things unique as zombies. It's like the writing world come to life.

Random knowledge, yo. Do you have any that you'd like to share? Feel free to speak. Or type. I mean, you can speak too, but that might be weird. And I probably won't hear you. By all means, though, go right ahead. I'll be off avoiding my friends, their tomahawks, and their elaborate plans for my zombie-tastic death.

I have a diploma (even though I wasn't technically supposed to get it until after I'm back from debate Nationals.)

And somehow...

I feel totally the same.

YA is interesting. Books are made out of moments. The sad ones, the happy ones, the ones that have you laughing until you can't breathe, or crying until your eyes ache. What we put into pages -- what we take out of pages -- comes from life. In the last two weeks, a lot of life, at least by societal standards, has been shoved into my lap. It's rather odd, actually.

I mean -- I never really doubted that, if possible by health and wealth, I would graduate high school. It's a luxury I've been allowed in my life to know that was a signpost I would obtain. It's something that I shouldn't take for granted, but definitely have. Through the stress and drama of high school, this was basically the mantra:

It was a basic one. An easy one. But when I look at books, and movies, and just stories in general, it feels like it should have been a bigger moment. It's the same with turning 18. I mean -- whoa. I'm an adult. (Haha. That's a joke. Right?) It doesn't feel any different. This is still one of my favorite movies.

I still like sparkles on my nails. Nothing has changed.But now people automatically take you a little bit more seriously when you say your age. You get jobs easier. In some countries, you can drink. But that moment wasn't any different from any other birthday. Senior prom was just another dance. Wearing my graduation robe was kind of just like wearing a superman cape, and my diploma just seems like a sheet of paper.

I guess the moments we put into books really aren't moments at all. It's odd, and much too musing of me, but I think the interesting part comes from the culmination of time. Maybe graduation was meh, but high school? I was lucky; I enjoyed every year. I joined debate. I made friends. I did decently well in figuring out my goals in writing and making strides to someday achieving those goals. I became me: I talk too much, care too much about politics, take too many pictures, and wear too much sparkly nail polish, but that is, indeed, me. Someday, those parts of me will make my writing better. The paper that means a diploma doesn't represent a ceremony of graduation; it represents four years of laughing and changing and crying and becoming who I am.

I don't know. I don't feel different; I'm not. Those moments didn't change anything about who I am, but they do represent the changes that have happened. It's growing up, I suppose.

How marvelously strange, and how scarily interesting.

More later, with more substance. I just wanted to update. Also, post pictures of Disney. Because why not?

The Required About -ME- Section

I'm Sam. I'm an 19 year old aspiring author and this is where I ramble.
My story, Altered, was a top pick for March 2010 on inkpop.com,and I attended Alpha -- an international writing camp that houses Tamora Pierce as a mentor -- in the summer of 2011 and 2013. I am also quite fond of strawberry tea.